Thank goodness I’ll see the Tree Sisters tomorrow.

Hurrah!! The Tree Sisters together again. Vaisey, Flossie, Jo, and me. We used to be five, but Honey, dear lovely Honey, has gone to Hollywood. She’s been, what do you call it . . . ? Talent-spotted by an American entrepreneur.

Hey, I’ve just thought of what you’d call it if the owlets had been spotted by an American entrepreneur looking for talent in the bird world.

Talon-spotted!!!!

They’d be talon-spotted!

I’m going to write that down.

I may turn out to be a comedy genius.

Snogs ahoy!

ON MONDAY MORNING, I struggled against the wind walking over the bridge to college. I’m early so I’ll go and stash my stuff in my locker, then find the Tree Sisters. If Bob hasn’t burned the lockers as fuel. I hope the money thing at Dother Hall is better than it was last term. Or at least we’ve still got a roof this term. I dread to think what would have happened if Honey’s manager hadn’t come up trumps with cash to keep Dother Hall going.

I miss Honey. She is sooo Honeyish.

And knows such a lot about boys.

Maybe she’ll come back and visit. Or we could visit her!

Yeehaaa, I feel like a real performing artist. I am one of an elite gang of “entertainers.” Our sole purpose in life is to give give give of ourselves. Until our feet bleed and we wear the golden slippers of applause. As Sidone says, “Do what you were born to do, girls, my girls! Give give until your feet bleed. And then give some more! And one day you will experience the golden slippers of applause.”

My only worry is that I’m not sure I have anything to give.

The rest of the Tree Sisters have special talents. Vaisey can sing and dance and act, and Jo can sing and act and . . . Flossie can sing and act and she’s really great at art. And Honey is so good at everything that she has been taken to Hollywood to be in films, and then there’s me . . .

Ms. Fox (“Just call me Fox. Blaise Fox.”), our dance tutor, believes in me. She thinks I have my own very special quality. That no one she has ever met has. Well, what she actually said was “Watching you perform is like watching someone set fire to their own pants. Strangely riveting.”

So that’s good, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Dr. Lightowler thinks I’m made largely of the twit gene. She has hated me ever since I accidentally flew off my bicycle and destroyed the backstage area during my Sugar Plum Bikey ballet. Oh and because I did spontaneous Irish dancing in her class. When we were doing a tragic improvisation of the Brontë sisters dying of consumption.

And maybe because I pretend she actually IS an owl.

But this term I’m going to show her and everyone else that I am Tallulah Casey, superstar in the making. Bleeding feet at the ready.